Gymnastics in Greece and the First Olympics - Gymnastics Zone Gymnastics Zone You are here: Home > Gymnastics in Greece and the First Olympics Gymnastics in Greece and the First Olympics Posted on January 19, 2011 in Articles Introduced in early Greek civilization, gymnastics facilitated physical body development utilizing a variety of activities including running, jumping, wrestling, weight lifting, swimming and throwing. Gymnastics in Ancient Crete The later history of gymnastics is closely related to the ancient Olympic Games, but a thousand years before the first Olympics, King Minos (and others during the Crete Minoan period 2,700 BC – 1,400 BC) had already advocated such physical exercises. The First Olympics In 776 BC, the Greeks held the first Olympic games, which was a festival dedicated to their god, Zeus. In this game there was only a foot race of 200 yards. These first Olympic games continued for about 1,100 years The ancient Greeks practiced physical exercises and routines and as a result, gymnastics was added in the ancient Olympic Games along with boxing, wrestling, throwing, jumping, and weightlifting.

A Variety of Gymnastics Events Gymnastics is one of the oldest Olympic sports, and competitors performed a variety of events that could loosely be termed “gymnastics”. These activities are recorded in illustrations seen on ancient clay pots. Nude Gymnastics The name of the sport “gymnastics” is derived from the ancient Greek word “gymnos” which literally translated means naked and comes from, the Greek word for naked. In ancient Greece, male athletes trained and competed in the nude. Because of this, women were excluded from the ancient Games, not just as competitors but also as spectators. Gymnasiums The Greeks built elaborate complexes known as gymnasia for their physical education training. The gymnasium, originally an area for physical training, evolved into a school for training both the body and the mind. There were three types of teachers in a gymnasium: Grammatistes, who taught reading, writing and other scholarly pursuits; Kitharistes, who taught music; and paidotribes, who were physical fitness teachers. Thus, the gymnasium also became a center for the arts, philosophy and literature.

Early Gymnastics to Music Physical training took place in the palestra, which was a square, walled, open-air workout area and even equipped with changing rooms and baths. A variety of activities were classified as gymnastics, including running, jumping, weightlifting, throwing, wrestling, and swimming. Evidently, many exercises were conducted to music, just like in the floor exercise routines of modern women’s artistic gymnastics. Spartan Gymnastics Among the ancient Greeks, gymnastics probably reached a peak in Sparta. With their emphasis on the military, the Spartans prized activities and exercises that could improve not only physical fitness but also military discipline. In Athens and other Greek city-states, usually only boys received a formal education and took part in gymnastics. Men’s and Women’s Gymnastics Physical fitness was a highly valued attribute in ancient Greece for both men and women.

Basic gymnastics events were practiced in some form even prior to the introduction of “gymnazein” which means literally, “to exercise naked” or “gymnos” meaning “naked art.” The Early Christian View of Gymnastics Christians of the time considered gymnastics Satanic because of its focus on the body and that gymnasts performed in the nude at the all-male ancient Games of Olympia. Early Gymnastics Evolves into Other Sports Many of these exercises, activities and competitions grouped under the ancient definition of gymnastics later became separate sports such as track and field, wrestling, and boxing. The First P.E. Teachers Early Greek gymnastics and physical fitness teachers, the paidotribes, were the first to design systems of physical activity for both athletes and the ordinary citizens. These programs were central aspects of a formal education. The Body is a Temple The Greek philosophy views the human body as a temple housing the mind and the soul, and the practice of gymnastics contributed to the physical and mental health of the temple and improved the functions of both. Over a period of time, the structured gymnastic, calisthenics and exercises were abandoned in favor of game sports.

Developing the Spirit, Mind and Body Men gathered at gymnasiums, a center of activity for the time, to not only practices the sport, but also to debate art, literature and philosophy. The major focus of gymnastics at this time focused on finding a symmetry between the mind and body by pairing physical exercise with intellectual activity. Numerous Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and the poet Homer advocated the qualities of gymnastic activity at strengthening the body and mind. Gymnastics Philosophers Philosophers of Greece, like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates would go into the gymnasium and would exercise their bodies and debate philosophy to exercise their minds. The attitude of those early gymnasts was a “sound mind in a sound body.” With the gathering of young and old alike, the gymnasia was more like a town hall than just a gym. The First Physical Therapist The famous Greek physician, Galen, who wrote a treatise called, “Caracalla,” developed a form of medical gymnastics similar to what we would call physical therapy today. His work emphasized the fitness exercises of gymnastics for the masses of citizenry as a means for increasing and maintaining better health.

In time, structured gymnastic and calisthenic exercises were abandoned in favor of game sports. Gymnastics Goals in Ancient Greece The Greeks developed three distinct program goals for gymnastic exercise in ancient Greece. It was used to maintain good physical condition in the citizenry. I was used as an integral part of military training. It was a part of the conditioning regime for athletes of many types. Gymnastics in Formal Education of Greek Children The early Greek teachers of physical fitness (paidotribes) were the first to design systems of physical activity for both athletes and the general citizenry. Such programs, which included gymnastics, were considered central to the formal education of children. The Greek philosophy portrayed the human body as a temple housing the mind and the soul, and the practice of gymnastics contributed to the health and functionality of the temple. Last Name Olympic Testimonials “Valentina and I highly recommend the services of Gymnastics Zone. John far exceeded our expectations in every way with his incredible attention to detail, research capability, and overall expertise in all things Gymnastics. We found John to be incredibly thorough, creative, and wonderful to work with.

If you’re looking for the best when it comes to professional gymnastics information, look no further than Gymnastics Zone!” Valentina and Mitch Gaylord - 1980 Olympic Gold Medalist *********************************************** “We have used John from Gymnastics Zone for web design, gym design, competition gym design, non-profit help, advice on lending and building leases, break-even analysis, book keeping and business plans. We have used John for the gym layout in both of my locations as well as layouts for all of my competitions. This year I called him for a new layout for our competition and he got it to me within hours of asking. I will be using him again with our expansion in the fall.” Erin and Jack Carter - Coach of Olympian Kristen Maloney How much were the original Olympics like the modern Games? - BBC News BBC News How much were the original Olympics like the modern Games? 29 June 2012 Read more about sharing. Close share panel Today's Olympic Games may seem a thoroughly modern affair. But how did the original event compare with today's spectacle, asks Greek historian Prof Paul Cartledge. What they wore - or didn't Survival of the fittest Which ancient Olympic Games have stood the test of time?

"Of the ancient running events only the 'stade' (200m sprint), double stade (400m), and 'long' race (c. 5000m) have survived," says Prof Cartledge. "Besides those, there were the combat events. Of these, wrestling and boxing survive (but in different forms). Wrestling was also one of the five events of the ancient pentathlon. "The other four were the stade (200m), javelin-throwing, discus-throwing and standing long jump. The ancient equestrian, chariot and mule-racing events have no modern Olympic parallels." The Olympics were strictly for men, as far as the athletics and combat sports were concerned. Women weren't even allowed to watch. However, women might compete in the equestrian events, but only by proxy as owners of the horses and chariots. The first woman victor on record was a Spartan princess. One reason for their exclusion, perhaps, was that the athletes, boxers and wrestlers all competed in the nude. The ancient Greek word for "to exercise" meant literally "to be stark naked".

Our gymnastics words are derived from this cultural peculiarity of theirs, for which the explanation was probably ultimately religious. The Games were a religious festival in honour of Zeus and demanded out of the ordinary devotions. Jockeys and charioteers did wear some clothes but they were hired hands, not the owners of the chariots or horses, who alone were credited with the victory and claimed the honorific prize. Which events were contested? Media captionMatthew Stadlen and Prof Paul Cartledge visit an ancient Olympic running track The single original event was the "stadion" or "stade", which was a roughly 200m sprint. The 4th Century BC track that is still visible and visitable at ancient Olympia measures just over 192m.

To the stade sprint were added successively: a 400m sprint, a roughly 5,000m "long" race (24 laps), long jump, discus-throwing, javelin-throwing, wrestling, boxing, extreme wrestling-cum-judo, and a race in armour (the one exception to the rule that athletes competed naked - though their only body-coverings were a helmet and shin-guards), and equestrian events - four-horse chariot race, horse races, and mule-cart race. The purpose of the Games The Olympics were explicitly a religious festival dedicated to the worship of the most powerful of all the many Greek divinities, Zeus of Mount Olympus (the highest mountain in Greece, almost 10,000ft).

Image caption Viewpoint from the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens Other divinities were worshipped in the area of the sanctuary at Olympia, for instance Zeus's sister-wife Hera (with a fine temple), and the hero Pelops who was credited as one of the Games's founders (with an ash-altar); but Zeus received the lion's share of the pious adulation, including a massive temple containing a gold-and-ivory cult-statue by the leading artist of the day, Pheidias of Athens, that was later ranked as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Where did the Games take place? The Games were always held at the same site, in a rather remote location in the north-west Peloponnese that was quite hard to get to (usually on foot) even from the main political centres of Athens and Sparta.

Find out more On The Road With The Ancient Olympians can be seen on the BBC News Channel on Saturday 30 June at 15:30 and 21:30 BST and on Sunday 1 July at 22:30 On The Road With The Ancient Olympians Competitors and spectators were drawn not just from mainland Greece but from all over the entire Greek world, which stretched from Spain to Georgia, far beyond the Aegean basin. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, who died in 323BC, Greeks were to be found permanently settled as far as afield as Afghanistan and Sind. The site was known as Olympia after Zeus's cult-title "Olympian", which was derived from Mount Olympus, a mountain many miles to the north of the Olympic site. How athletes and other victors were rewarded Winning was its own reward, in theory. A symbolic olive-wreath crown culled from trees growing in Olympia's sacred grove, the Altis, was the sole prize on offer. This was for the winner only - there were no silver or bronze medals.

Image caption Victors may have been immortalised in sculptures But a victor's home city might also bestow on him a substantial one-off monetary reward or a lifetime's free dining in the town hall. And the victor might himself commission a leading poet such as Pindar to immortalise his fame in an ode to his joy or commission a sculptor to fashion a lifesize representation of himself or herself in bronze or marble to be dedicated to a god either at Olympia or in his or her home city. At the end of the 5th Century BC the city of Acragas in Sicily (modern Agrigento) honoured a favourite son, Exaenetus, a two-times victor in the stade race, with an escort of 300 chariots drawn by white horses and tore down a portion of the city walls to enable him to re-enter in triumphant majesty. A century earlier, the wrestler Milo from Croton in south Italy was the Usain Bolt of his day. Not only did he win six times at Olympia and at many other Games, but he also performed legendary feats of bull-carrying and beef consumption.

An international event The BBC's home of 2012: Latest Olympic news, sport, culture, torch relay, video and audio At first and for many centuries the Games were all-Greek and only-Greek, which is what "panhellenic" means. Put negatively, barbarians (non-Greeks) need not apply. But when Rome conquered Greece, in the second Century BC, Romans objected to being called barbarians and demanded honorary Greek status to enable them to compete. Which they did, for the most part, with great success. The Games indeed continued under the Roman dispensation every four years without a single break until 393AD, when they were terminated by a devoutly Christian Roman emperor, Theodosius I, on the grounds that they were polytheistic and pagan. Getting it all wrong Another Roman emperor who notoriously did not quite appreciate the ancient Olympic spirit was the supposedly philhellenic Nero, who died in 68AD. He demanded, with bribery and menaces, that the panhellenic Greek committee postpone the due date of the Olympics for two years so that he could fit in his appearance at the Games with a Greek imperial tour in 67AD.

He was thrown from his 16-horse chariot but nevertheless was awarded the victor's olive wreath crown. Such was imperial power in those days - not all that different from Hitler's Berlin 1936 Games, perhaps. Let us hope that the quintessentially Greek spirit of competitiveness (it's from their word agonia that our word agony comes) takes a pleasantly different form in London 2012. Timeline of Women in Sports Gymnastics Before 1800 The name was derived from the word gymnos, which is the Greek word for naked because the men generally trained and competed naked. As a result of the nudity, women were not originally allowed to participate in the sport. 5000 B.C.- Acrobats entertained the nobility of Egypt. 2700 B.C.- On the island of Crete, acrobats vaulted over the backs of bulls. 500 B.C.- Gymnastics reached a peak of interest in Sparta as a result of gymnastics incorporating exercises that improved both physical fitness as well as discipline for their military. Unlike most other city-states, women also took part in gymnastics in Sparta because women needed strong bodies so that they could bear children.

Most exercises were conducted to music like the floor exercise of modern gymnastics. 31 B.C- 476 A.D.- Romans also incorporated gymnastics into training for the soldiers. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the knowledge of physical fitness seemed to have been lost 500-1450- During the Medieval time period, acrobatics survived by acrobats traveling and showcasing their tumbling skills. 1793- Johann Friedrich Gustmuths published a book called Gymnastics for the Young, which was a manual for physical education teachers. 1800's 1811- Frederich Ludwig Jahn was a gymnastics teacher who set up a gym or turnplatz near Berlin. Jahn is credited with developing three apparatuss that are still used in gymnastics today. These include: the high bar, the parallel bars and the rings. He called the gymnasts turners. 1830- In France, there were reports of uneven bars. 1852- After unrest in Germany, 252,000 Germans immigrated to the United States.

It is believed that of these immigrants, there were turners who influenced the development of gymnastics in America. 1881- The European Gymnastics Federation was founded and included only three European countries. 1900's 1906- At the interim Games in Greece, a gymnastics demonstration was given by a Danish women. 1914- Womens athletic competition was officially opposed by the American Olympic Committee, with the only exception being the floor exercise in which women were allowed to wear long skirts. 1921- The European Gymnastics Federation was reorganized into its present form as the International Gymnastics Federation when non-European countries joined. 1928- Team Gymnastics and Track and Field were opened to women at the Summer Olympics along with three other events. There were stipulations that womens shorts were no more that four inches above their knees. 1931- The first US All-Around Gymnastics Championship was won by Roberta C. Ranck 1934- The Womens Artistic Gymnastics World Championship was held for the first time. Men and womens gymnastics were and still are quite different with separate apparatuses, techniques and competitions.

1936- At the Berlin Games, gymnastics for women was added to the Olympic program. Two years after the uneven bars appeared at the first World Championship in Budapest, women competed on uneven bars in the Berlin Olympics. 1952- Individual gymnastics was introduced, rather than strictly team gymnastics. The 1952 Olympics was the first Olympics in which women were allowed to compete as individuals in the four apparatus program - vault, uneven bars, beam and floor. 1956- A Ukranian native, Larissa Latynina won the all around title, three gold medals, a silver medal and a bronze medal in gymnastics at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. 1960- While three months pregnant, Larissa Latnynina won three gold medals, two silver medals and a bronze medal at the Rome Olympics. 1964- Larissa Latynina retired from gymnastics with more medals than any other athlete in history. She won nine gold medals, five silver medals and four bronze medals. 1973- The first American to win the gymnastics title and an Olympic gold was Marcia Frederick.

1984- The first ever all around Gymnastics title for the US was won by sixteen year old Mary Lou Retton. 1991- Kim Zmeskal became the first female American to win an all-around world championship in gymnastics. 1995- Dominque Mocceanu became the youngest athlete to win the National Gymnastics Championship all-around title at age thirteen. 1999- Trampolining was one of the sixteen new womens events added to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. 2000's 2003- The US gymnastics team won the World Gymnastics Championship with a young and injured team. 2004- Carly Patterson and Courtney Kupets shared the U.S. Gymnastics Championship title with a score of 76.45. 2004- At the Olympic games, Romania won gold, the U.S. won silver and Russia won bronze. 2005- Dominique Dawes was inducted into the US Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Ancient Greek Olympic Games Michael Lahanas Αρχαία Ελλάδα : Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες The Persians . . . enquired of them [deserters from Arcadia] what the Greeks were doing. The Arcadians answered, ‘They are holding the Olympic games, seeing the athletic sports and the chariot races.’ ‘And what,’ said the man, ‘is the prize for which they contend?’ ‘An olive wreath,’ returned the others, ‘which is given to the man who wins.’ On hearing this, Tritantaechmes, the son of Artabanus, uttered a speech which was in truth most noble, but which caused him to be taxed with cowardice by King Xerxes. Hearing the men say that the prize was not money but a wreath of olive, he could not forbear from exclaiming before them all, ‘Good heavens, Mardonius, what manner of men are these against whom you have brought us to fight--men who contend with one another, not for money, but for honor.

Herodotus, The Persian Wars, VIII, 26 Homer describes athletic competitions in the Iliad as funeral games in honour of Patroklos and the contests held by the Phaeacians to entertain their guest, Odysseus , in the Odyssey . The motivation for competition initially could be for personal reasons only ( always to be the best and preeminent among all others as Peleus says to his son Achilles, Iliad ). I believe this to be the real reason of the success of the ancient Olympic Games. To win before a large crowd of people is more attractive and such occasions were various festivals in honour of the gods. The first known record of the Ancient Olympic Games traces back to 776 BC. After the end of the 4th BC century the games were less religious oriented with more professional athletes (participating in various games and collecting prizes like modern Tennis players). The Olympics were held every 4 years in July or August. The time between two Olympic Games was called an Olympiad. Only Greeks free citizens were initially allowed to participate (with some exceptions such as Nero).

The Nike (a symbol of victory) of Paionios flying from the Olymp lands on a column in front of the Zeus Temple in Olympia to honour the athletes of the Olympic Games.. Hegias 275378, Athlete receives a gift from Nike (victory) Kylix now lost On the road to Olympia there is a precipitous mountain with big rocks, called Typaion. There is an Elean rule that any woman who has been seen at the (Olympic) Games or has crossed the (River) Alpheios during the forbidden days shall be pitched headlong from the summit Pausanias Slaves and “Barbarians” could watch the Games (only in the Hellenistic times and later) but not married women! An exception was the priestess of Demeter, Chamyne, who used to sit at the altar of the goddess, which was situated exactly opposite the tribune of the chief judges of the Games, the Hellanodikae.

Kallipateira the Pherenice a widowed mother from a rich family exiled from Rhodes broke the law according to which the punishment was Death (I hope that there was no such case) but she survived because she was a mother of winners of the Games. ...She came to Olympia in 404 BC to watch with pride her son who was going to compete for an Olympic victory like his uncles and other ancestors before him. Having entered the stadion in the guise of a trainer, she could not, however, restrain her enthusiasm upon her son's victory in the boxing event, and as she jumped over the fence of the trainer's stand in order to go to him and embrace him, her mantle slipped over her shoulder thus betraying her female sex. However, the Hellanodikae, i.e. the chief judges of the Games, acquitted her from the prescribed punishment out of respect for her father, her brothers and her son: an entire dynasty of Olympic victors who were an honour to her family, her country and the gods. After this incident, however, the Hellanodikae decided that trainers who accompanied athletes to the Games should enter the Stadion naked (Com. Bind.

01.VIII, Ael.n.h. I 1. Aischenenes Lett. 4,5), Nikos Yalouris WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO LETTERS, SCIENCE, POLITICS AND SPORT In 80 BC the Olympic Games are held in Rome. After 1169 years in 393 AD the Emperor Theodosius I abolished in a fanatic campaign against non Christians the Greek Olympic Games, with 293 Olympic Games had been held. In 426 AD the Emperor Theodosius II ordered the destruction of all Olympic temples. The temples in Olympia were set in fire. A Christian Website provides details: And so, on February 24, 391, the emperor began issuing a series of decrees that effectively outlawed Greco-Roman paganism and all the rituals that accompanied it. First, he prohibited pagan sacrifice, including—for the first time—the state ceremonies still practiced in Rome.

Then came the closing of all shrines and temples: "No person shall approach the shrines, nor walk through the temples, nor revere the images formed of mortal hands." Next came a law forbidding apostasy from Christianity to paganism, and finally, on November 8, 392, Theodosius declared all sacrifice and divination punishable by death. That meant destroying private altars, domestic idols placed in hearth and kitchen, hanging garlands, etc. Bishop Ambrose was ecstatic, praising "Theodosius who, after the example of Jacob, supplanted perfidious tyrants and banished the idols of the gentiles; who in his faith wiped out all worship of graven images, and trampled down their ceremonies." For the whole story see and explains why this had to be so..(although the idea of that it prevented the animal sacrifice I cannot believe is something that Theodosius considered for a second). The pancration events maybe were brutal but cannot be compared with the barbaric and inhuman events of the gladiator fights later introduced by the Romans.

As the Games were religious dedicated to Zeus and the Christian Emperors wanted to force by all means all the population to be Christians it was obvious that the Games were forbidden. In 1612 Robert Dover in England tries to revive the Games with events close to Birmingham, the so-called Olimpick Games upon Cotswold Hills. In 1766 Richard Chandler discovers ancient Olympia. After more than 1500 years in 1896 Olympic Games start again in Athens. Now they are not religious oriented and from a Greek event it is a global event. Pierre de Coubertin responsible for the rebirth of the Olympic Games since 1896 and Dimitris Vikelas the Greek who was responsible that the city selected for the 1896 Games was Athens, Greece. He was the first President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The Contribution of Dimitris Vikelas to the Revival of the Olympic Games. (PDF File) Map of Olympia 2004 Olympic Games again in Athens. Hercules is considered in some stories as the “inventor” of the Olympic Games.

Others say it was Pelops (from which the Peloponnese took its name) : The foot length of Hercules Older stories of the Olympic Games: 1664 BC Hercules and the first Olympic Games, again in 1410 BC 50 years after the great flood, in 1314 BC Games by Pelops after marrying Hippodamia, in 1242 BC when Hercules conquers Elis (Polyduces mentioned as champion boxer). Then revival of games 776 BC at Elis in the 10th year of Theopompus. Pausanias, says that the games were reestablished to celebrate the peace treaty among the kings, Iphitos, Lycourgos, and Kleosthenes (which was honoured as the Sacred Truce). Olympia Stamp 1960, Greece The prize was called "Athlon" a head-wreath of cotinus, i.e. a branch of wild olive from a tree the Kallistefano. Why did they receive money?

Because even Heracles was not paid by Eurystheus An Olympionike, a winner of an event receiving an olive wreath (and also red ribbons) ( Epiktetos Painter, 520-510 BC). Phlegon (a second century AD author) states that the cotinus was established by Iphitus after an advice by the Oracle of Delphi in 752 BC. This replaced the prize of the first few Games that was a piece of meat (meria) of a sacrificed animal. The victors were called athlophoroi i.e. those who wear the athlon. (I use also the word Olympionikes as victor in Olympic Games). After an athlete won an Olympic event, a herald would announce his name, his father's name, his city of origin. He was given a palm branch and adorned with red woolen ribbons around his head, arm, and leg marking his victory The crowd praised the victor with Tinella Kallinike (Τήνελλα καλλίνικε )– Well done, glorious victor! An event called also agon (from which also agony is derived).

Except the Olympic Games in Olympia (in honour of Zeus ) we have the Games at: Delphi (Pythian Games in honour of Apollo related to the killing of Python , originally only one contest, the singing of a hymn to Apollo. Since 586 BC every four years at the third year of each Olympiad), Corinth ( Isthmian Games in honour of Poseidon , (as founder Sisyphus is considered, related to the death of Melicertes ) every two years at the second and fourth year of an Olympiad) “He [ Theseus ] also founded games [at the Isthmus of Corinth] to rival those of Herakles; his ambition was that just as the Greeks at Herakles' insistence celebrated the Olympian Games in honor of Zeus, so through his own initiative they should celebrate the Isthmian Games in honor of his reputed father, Poseidon. The games which had previously been established at the Isthmus in honor of Melicertes were held a night and were organized more in the form of a religious rite than of a spectacle or a great public gathering.

Some writers, however, have made out that the Isthmian Games were founded in memory of Skeiron, and that Theseus wished in this way to atone for his murder because of the kinship between them, for Skeiron was a son of Kantheos and Henioche the daughter of Pittheus. Others say that their son was not Skeiron but Sinis, and that it was in his honor that Theseus founded the Games. However this may be, Theseus established the Festival and made an agreement with the Corinthians that Athenians who came to visit the Games should be provided with a place of honor in as large a space as could be covered by the sail of the state galley which brought them there, when it was stretched out on the ground. This is what we are told by Hellanikos and by Andron of Halikarnassos [FGrH #10 F6].

Plutarch Theseus Nemean Games history, Opheltes / Archemoros, Dionysos, Zeus, Amphiaraus , Parthenopeus and others Nemea ( Nemean Games held in honour of Zeus and the infant Opheltes who was killed by snakebite, every 2 years at the second and fourth year of an Olympiad). The prize for the Pythian Games was a crown of bay-leaves. The reason why a crown of laurel is the prize for a Pythian victory is in my opinion simply and solely because the prevailing tradition has it that Apollo fell in love with the daughter of Ladon . Pausanias 10.7.8 The Isthmian and Nemean Games prize was a crown of celery-leaves (dry and fresh leaves respectively). The baby Opheltes-Archemoros , Archaeological Museum of Nemea The Death of Opheltes, Corinth The infant Opheltes, from Nemea.

Even when Lycurgus was warned not to leave his son on the ground until he could walk the woman who was responsible for Opheltes left the infant on a bed on the ground while she helped the Seven against Thebes . The prophecy became true and Opheltes was killed by a snake. Messengers (Spondorophoroi) announced in all cities the date of the competition. Up to 50000 visitors from all places (Greeks from Spain to Egypt). Even the fate of Greece was at stake with Xerxes invasion army many thousand visited the Games in 480 BC. All states taking part in the Games were forbidden to go to war, carry on a dispute in the law courts or execute criminals. Olympic Truce (duration 10 months?) or Ekecheiria (Another Truce was that of Elis for the Eleusinian Mysteries rite). The first people to exercise naked were the Spartans. They stripped off their clothes in public and rubbed themselves with oil after they had finished.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War Orsippus of Megara (Όρσιππος) was probably the first nude runner of the Olympia foot race in 720 BC. Near Coroebus is buried Orsippus who won the footrace at Olympia by running naked when all his competitors wore girdles according to ancient custom. They say also that Orsippus when general afterwards annexed some of the neighboring territory. My own opinion is that at Olympia he intentionally let the girdle slip off him, realizing that a naked man can run more easily than one girt. Pausanias. Naked (Gr. gymnos), (gymnazein : exercise naked) other words derived: gymnasium, gymnastic. Spartan athletes were almost for 150 years dominating the Games until in 594 BC Athens decided to change this and systematic training started with young boys. Events Only individual events were considered really important and team events like today were known but were less important and not included in the Olympic Games. This is a Greek culture element that stresses the importance of the individual and less that of the Group.

Athletes running (another athlete is not shown in this stamp ) with an amazing (very unlikely) synchronization, the right arm and left leg in a leading position. This is probably showing a 1 stadion or diaulos event. In Dolichos the athletes are shown to be much slower (see the 1906 stamp at the end) as the distance is much larger and it is impossible to keep the high speed like in shorter races. Continue Olympic Self-Sacrifice | History Today Olympic Self-Sacrifice Ancient Greece , Ancient Cultural , Sport Paul Cartledge explores the differences between today’s interpretation of the Olympic Games and their significance in the ancient world The modern Olympics seem so much part and parcel of our modern world – all those accusations of drug-taking and financial chicanery – that it is hard to remember they are only just over a hundred years old. Their founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, wished to foster both athletic excellence and international harmony, and as a conventionally educated French aristocrat he looked back to the ancient Greek Olympic Games for inspiration, believing fondly that that was exactly what they too had done, and why they had been founded.

In fact, de Coubertin was wildly wrong: not only about the peaceful diplomatic mission of the ancient Games, but also, and more crucially, about their essential nature. The original Olympics, as we shall see, were desperately alien to what we understand by competitive sports today. First, however, a brief recapitulation of what the ancient Games actually consisted of by the time they were definitively reorganised in the aftermath of the Persian Wars (490-479 BC). They were held then, as always, before and since, at Olympia, in the north-west Peloponnese, a relatively insignificant and inaccessible location. They were under the presidency of the local city-state of Elis, again not one of the major players in the ancient Greek league. So far as the sports component went, there were by then nine main events, all for male competitors only: the stadion or one-lap sprint (about 200 metres); diaulos or 400 metres; dolichos or ‘long’ distance (24 laps); pentathlon; boxing; four-horse chariot race; pankration; horse race; and race-in-armour.

But the sports component was only one part, and not the most important, of the five-day festival, held at the second full moon after the summer solstice. The festival began with a swearing-in and oath-taking. It was punctuated by religious rituals and communal singing of victory hymns. And it ended with a religious procession to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, where the victors were crowned, followed by the sacrifice of many animals, feasting and celebrations. It was indeed the Greeks who invented the idea of competitive games or sports. Their word agon, meaning ‘competition’, gives us our word ‘agony’, which is a fair indication of the spirit of ancient Greek competitiveness. But they did so within a specifically religious context. We sometimes say today, meta-phorically, that for some, sport is a religion. But for the ancient Greeks the sport of the Olympic Games was quite literally a religious exercise – a display of religious devotion and worship. The Olympic Games, the grand-daddy of all the many hundreds of regular and irregular athletic festivals held throughout the Greek world, were in origin part of the worship of Zeus Olympios (Zeus, the mighty overlord of Mt Olympos), far away to the north in Thessaly.

Parallels in this respect can be drawn with the development of the theatre. It was the ancient Greeks, and more especially the Athenians, who invented what is recognisably our idea of theatre, but they did so within the context of religious festivals in honour of the wine-god Dionysos. ‘Theatre’ at, for example, our Edinburgh ‘Festival’, bears little obvious trace of its origins in the festivals of Dionysos at Athens (apart perhaps from the consumption of alcohol). To show how heavily the Games impacted on the Greeks’ everyday consciousness, mentality and beha-viour, I shall consider four allegedly historical examples, three of them taken from the not (to us) so obviously religious fields of war and politics away from the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia. It does not matter whether the incidents happened exactly as reported. The point is that the Greeks unquestioningly assumed they could have done, since they fitted in with their established, conventional outlook. They help us to understand the nature of the religious atmosphere and ritual that the Games enshrined, and to answer the question of in what sense and to what extent they remained a religious festival, despite a certain process of secularisation.

The first example concerns a man from the island of Rhodes, who was given the nationalistic name of Dorieus, ‘the Dorian’; something akin to our calling a Scottish boy Scott, or an Irish-American girl Erin. This Dorieus came from a family of extraordinarily successful games- men. His own speciality was the pankration, a notoriously gruelling mixture of judo, boxing and all-in wrestling, with practically no holds barred. In 432, 428 and 424 BC, as we learn from contemporary documents, he won no fewer than three Olympic crowns in a row. These were in addition to eight victories at the Isthmian Games, another Panhellenic (all-Greek) games festival which was held every two years; seven at the Nemean Games (also biennial); and one, by a walkover – the Greek for which was ‘without dust’ – since no one would challenge him, at the Pythian Games, which were held every four years at Delphi. The fact that he won at all four of the so-called ‘Circuit’ Games entitled him to claim the special accolade of ‘Circuit Victor’.

Dorieus, as his name suggests, was fanatically pro- the Dorian Spartans and anti- the Ionian Athenians. Towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) between Sparta and Athens, when Athens had almost lost its control of the east Mediterranean, Dorieus fought on the Spartan side with his own ships. But the Athenians captured him and brought him alive to Athens. They were about to put him to death as an enemy, when it became known to the Assembly who he was. Whereupon ‘they changed their minds and let him go without doing him the least ungracious action,’ as one Athenian source puts it. Would we have treated a captured German athlete in 1944 in quite so gracious a manner, I wonder? My second example also concerns the Athenian treatment of a successful Olympic competitor, but this time one of its own citizens, the pin-up glamour-boy Alcibiades. In 415 BC he was the leading spirit behind the imperialist gamble of invading and, ideally, conquering all of Sicily.

The gamble, we know, ended in total disaster two years later, but at the time, when Alcibiades stood up in the Assembly to speak in its favour, he was on a high and Athens was on a bit of a roll. In addition to the more practical political and military reasons Alcibiades gave for the Athenians to vote in favour of his proposal, he threw in an extraordinary argument based on his recent success in the Olympic Games. He was, he said, the sort of man who had achieved the unprecedented feat of not only winning the four-horse chariot race at the Olympics, probably in 416, but also of entering no fewer than seven chariot teams in all, which between them gained second, fourth and seventh places as well as the crown itself. Alcibiades had not, of course, personally driven the winning team; as in the Palio, the horse race held at Siena since the Middle Ages, professionals were hired to act as drivers. But he had put up the money – an enormous amount. He even persuaded Euripides to write a commemorative ode about it.

Can we imagine Tony Blair or Bill Clinton arguing in favour of war in Kosovo, say, on the grounds that a horse of theirs had won the Epsom or Kentucky Derby? My third example is not an individual, but rather a city, namely Sparta, which was Athens’ major rival or enemy for much of the Classical period. In 480 the Persian Great King Xerxes had led a mighty expedition into Greece by land and sea from the north and east. It was not quite as mighty as Herodotus would have us believe (1,700,000 land troops; 1,207 ships), but it was nevertheless a huge armament to pit against the relatively puny and very disunited Greek resistance. Early in 480 the handful of Greek cities that could actually agree to co-operate, up to a point anyway, decided their first land strategy should be to defend the passes from Thessaly into central Greece. One of these ran through Thermopylai, the ‘Hot Gates’.

Yet Leonidas, the Spartan king app-ointed to defend Thermopylai, set off from Sparta with a mere 300 men, champion fighters all, of course, but still only a tiny task force. Why so? Because the Spartans were an exceptionally religious people, and it happened to be the Dorians’ sacred month Karneios (in honour of ram-god Apollo), so they felt unable to send out a full force until the Karneia festival was over. The other allies found this a completely convincing explanation, since they too had a religious reason for sending out no more than advance forces of their own – as Herodotus put it, ‘there was the Olympic festival, which fell in at just the same time as this outbreak of war.’ When Herodotus came later to offer a definition of Greekness, it is no surprise to find that central to it was the Greeks’ common religious outlook and practice. Finally, we come to Kleomedes from the tiny Aegean island of Astypalaia, who was victor in the boxing at the Olympics of 484.

Let me quote the relevant passage of Pausanias, a religious travel-writer of the second century AD, but one who used much earlier sources: They say Kleomedes of Astypalaia killed a man called Hikkos of Epidauros; he was condemned by the judges and lost his victory, and went out of his mind from grief. He went home to Astypalaia and attacked a school there where there were sixty boys. He overturned the pillar that held up the roof, and the roof fell in on them. The people stoned him and he took refuge in the sanctuary of Athene, where he climbed inside a chest and pulled down the lid. The Astypalaians struggled in vain to get it open, and in the end smashed in its wooden sides. But they found no trace of Kleomedes either alive or dead. So they sent to the Delphic oracle to ask what had become of Kleomedes, and they say the Pythian priestess gave them this oracle: ‘Astypalaian Kleomedes is the last of the heroes.

Worship him – he is no longer mortal.’ I have listed these four incidents in reverse chronological order, because I want to show the religious content increasing with each instance. For the ancient Greeks, however, religion was so intimately intertwined with every other aspect of their lives that they did not actually have a word corresponding to our ‘religion’ (which we have taken from Latin). The nearest they got was a circumlocution meaning, literally, ‘the things of the gods’. A victor in the Olympic Games, in other words, whether or not he actually won in person, and whether or not he had to kill his opponent to win, was regarded as having been touched by divinity, as being raised above the station of a mere mortal. He might even, as in the case of the Houdini-like Kleomedes, receive hero-cult, a form of religious worship, after his death. I stress too the gendered ‘he’. This was strictly men-only sport. In fact, women, apart from a priestess, were banned even from watching the Olympic sports.

A doutbless apocryphal tale had it that a female relative of Dorieus tried to sneak in to watch her male relations carrying off all those crowns. She was forced to go in male disguise, but alas tripped over, her chiton (tunic) rode up, and all – or all that mattered – was revealed. Gender-disguise and bodily revelation offer an appropriate point of departure for our enquiry into the precise religious nature of the Games. They probably did begin, chiefly as a local Peloponnesian festival, some time around their alleged starting date of 776 BC. But their ultimate origins are lost in the mists of time. All athletes competed at Olympia entirely naked, gumnos, whence our word ‘gymnastics’. Aetiological stories to account for this practice differed; according to one, in 720 the eventual winner of the stadion race (hence ‘stadium’) or 200-metre dash, then still the only event, crossed the finishing line wearing rather less than when he left the starting sill.

In other words, his kit unravelled and fell off, but he won, and ever after all competitors, whatever the event, ran or boxed or threw, or whatever, stark naked (apart from a truss). In reality, this literally gymnastic practice was not adopted because it was ergonomically more efficient, nor because the ancient Greeks were devoted naturists. Nor, I suspect, was it a survival from those far-off Palaeolithic days when ‘Man the Hunter’ allegedly hunted in the nude. This was, rather, a case of ritual nudity, marking the sacredness of Olympic space and time, a crucial part of the religious ritual within which the running and (later) other events were enfolded. Another sign that the Olympic Games were religious, and indeed specially religious, was that the prizes awarded were always symbolic tokens – simple crowns made of olive leaves taken from trees growing wild in the Altis, or sacred precinct of Zeus. Olympic competitors did not compete for money nor for other intrinsically valuable objects.

(In contrast, bronze tripods were awarded at the games in honour of Hera at Argos, and oil-filled decorated jars donated at the Athenian Panath-enaia.) Competitors at Olympia were therefore technically amateurs, although they could earn a fortune at other, value-prize games, so perhaps we should rather say they were shamateurs. At any rate, the ideology of amateurism and religious devotion was crucial to the ancient Games. Pierre de Coubertin was not then comp-letely off-beam in insisting that his new, revived Olympics should be for amateur as opposed to professional athletes (‘athletes’ comes from Greek athlon meaning ‘prize’). He was, on the other hand, totally wrong in his interpretation of the spirit in which the ancient Greeks competed. What seems to have especially misled him was the sacred Olympic truce which ran for a month on either side of the five-day festival. This was not a symbol of the amity then reigning among the comity of Greek nations, but a severely practical device for ensuring that the competitors and spectators could get to the Games safely, and that the Games could then be held without interruption from the otherwise endemic Greek inter-state warfare.

This explains the precise name given to the truce: ekekheiria – ‘a staying of hands’ or armistice. Actually, even the declaration of the truce was not always foolproof. In 364, warfare spilled over into the Altis itself. Furthermore, despite the wishful imaginings of the anglophile de Coubertin, the events at the ancient Olympics were not conducted in any ‘gentlemanly’ British spirit of ‘fair play’. They were more like a paramilitary exercise, ‘war minus the shooting’, as George Orwell once described modern professional sport. From the gender point of view, moreover, they were in the fullest sense a display of andreia. This literally meant ‘manliness’, but it was also the general Greek word for ‘courage’ in the sense of martial pugnaciousness. The unintended death of Hikkos in 484 at the hands, or rather fists, of Kleomedes was, predictably, not a one-off occurrence. To conclude, let me focus briefly on why this article is entitled ‘Olympic self-sacrifice’. Sacrifice, derived from the Latin, means in general a ‘making-sacred’.

Specifically, it is a term used by scholars of ancient religions to describe those acts of ritual dedication and devotion whereby something is given up or offered up by mankind to a god or the gods in exchange for an expected return. It refers to an act of communication or communion between human and superhuman, mortal and divine, but also an act that marks the unbridgeable gap between the two. Almost anything could in principle be sacrificed in this way – even bodily sweat, if you believe David Sansone’s theory explaining the origins and meaning of the stadion race at the Olympics as a ritual expenditure, or sacrifice, of sweat as the runners dashed towards their goal, the altar of Zeus, in a ritual designed to ensure the goodwill of the Father of Gods and Men. Less fanciful, and historically better attested, is the religious significance of the undoubted climax of the ancient Olympic festival. This was not in fact any of the athletic events, but the concluding grand procession to the altar of Zeus outside his temple by all participants and spectators, led by the winner of the stadion race (who gave his name to the whole Games – thus 720 BC was the Games of Orsippos of Megara).

This ritual procession was followed by a great blood-sacrifice of a hekatomb, 100 oxen, provided by the organising city of Elis. Such was the antiquity of the festival, and so numerous were the cattle slaughtered ritually over the years, that the great altar of Zeus was not built as usual out of stone, but composed simply of the burnt animals’ ashes congealed with blood and fat. That is perhaps not a very enticing thought, but then ancient religion is often desperately alien to our way of thinking. To the Greeks, however, it all seemed the most natural thing in the world. And they had the texts to back them up – above all the poems of Hesiod (Theogony and Works and Days) in which they had heard, no doubt many times, the origins-myth of how the Titan Prometheus had once tricked the younger (that is, more recently created) god Zeus on behalf of mankind in the matter of animal blood-sacrifice.

Thereafter, the Olympian gods were entitled to receive only the smell of the animal sacrifice, which rose up to them from the burning of the animal bones wrapped in fat, whereas men got to eat the meat and innards, which thanks to Prometheus’s theft of fire they were able to cook to a turn. They then ate the cooked meat in a communion meal which reinforced their sense of common identity as sharers in the ritual feast. In the very special case of the Panhellenic Olympics, it also reinforced their sense of national identity as Greeks. Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge and the author of The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (BBC Books, 2001). Ancient Olympic athletes competed in the nude Home » sports » Ancient Olympic athletes competed in the nude Ancient Olympic athletes competed in the nude The word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means naked. In ancient times athletes practiced in the nude to the accompaniment of music. They also performed naked at the Olympic Games. Women were not allowed to participate or even to attend as spectators. The first Olympic games were held in 776BC – and then every 4 years until 339BC.

The first Olympic race was won by Corubus, a chef. For many years the Olympics consisted of only one race, a sprint of 192 metres (210 yards, the length of the stadium) called the “stadion.” A second race of 400 metres was added 50 years later. The pentathlon, wrestling, boxing, single-horse and four-horse chariot races were included later still. There also was a special event in which runners competed in hoplite armor, helmet, shield, and greaves that weighed 20-25 kg (50-60 lbs). There were no team events, relay races or the long distance race of Marathon – these events were introduced in the modern Olympics. Go for silver No medals were awarded in the ancient Olympics. A winner received an olive wreath to wear on his head. Second and third placings received nothing. When the Olympics were revived in 1896 in Athens, Greece, winners received silver medals instead of gold medals. Eight years later, at the 1904 Games in St. Louis, gold replaced silver for first place. Today’s gold medals actually are sterling silver covered with a thin coat of gold.

Olympic medals since 1928 have featured the same design on the front: a Greek goddess, the Olympic Rings, the coliseum of ancient Athens, a Greek vase known as an amphora, a horse-drawn chariot, and the year, number of the Olympiad, and host city. Games for all At the first modern Olympic Games there were 311 male but no female competitors. Women were allowed to take part in the next Olympics in Paris. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games there were 3543 female competitors. The oldest Olympic athlete at the Sydney Games was a 62-year-old archer representing Vanuatu. But he has some years to go to be the oldest ever Olympian. That title is held by Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn who won his sixth Olympic medal at the 1920 Antwerp Games at the age of 72 years and 280 days old. The youngest ever Olympian is Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics. He was 10 years old.

The first ever perfect score of 10 in Olympic gymnastics was achieved at the 1976 Montreal Olympics by Romanian Nadia Comaneci. She won 3 gold medals. The record for the most Olympic medals ever won is held by Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina. Competing in three Olympics, between 1956 and 1964, she won 18 medals: 9 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze. Thus she also tops the list of gold medals winners, beating Olympic stars such as US swimmer Mark Spitz and Finnish long distance runner Paavo Nurmi. The Olympic Games is the largest single broadcast event in the world, broadcasted in 220 countries to more than 3.5 bilion people. The Olympic Games Summer Olympics The modern Olympics is the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France. He organised the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece in 1896. A total of 245 athletes from 14 nations competed. The modern Olympic Games:

Question: What Olympic sport is derived from the Greek word for naked?
Answer: Gymnastics